Course:History 344 Nasty Families/Widows
After her husband’s death, a widow was often pressured into remarrying because the wealth she had acquired from her first marriage could be transferred to her new one. Because men often lost their wives in childbirth, many remarried and one way a man could acquire more wealth was by marrying a wealthy widow. Perhaps as many as thirty percent of marriages in mid-sixteenth-century England were by widows or widowers.[1]
During the fourteenth century, a villein widow’s share of her husband’s land, according to Common Law, ranged from one-third to one-half.[2] She, however, often received the right to life usage of the land.[3] Because a man without property could acquire land by marrying a widow who had such property rights, a high percentage of younger men marrying older, property-holding women was found on “non-colonizing” estates.[4] Remarriage meant the transfer of property from the wife to the husband, the husband paying a fine for the acquirement of the new land: “Where land was scarce, remarriage was frequent, but when land was readily available, widows remarried only rarely."[5] In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a widow was more likely to own her own land if she had children who were still minors or if the marriage was childless.[6] In seventeenth-century France, widows benefited from the legal rights of being the heads of households and were permitted to manage their own property and remarry without the permission of their families.[7] Middling order widows took advantage of their position and made leases as tenants, sued landlords for repairs, and bought and sold land.[8] However, female heads of households were still considered “anomalies” and “patriarchal culture was hostile to women as household heads.”[9] If a woman did not remarry and instead lived independently, it would be to the ruin of her deceased husband’s estate.[10] (BN: Could edit to make more specifically relevant to seventeenth-century England)
Wealthy, even homely widows were often pursued for their riches. A 1653 letter written by Dorothy Vernon to Sir William Temple describes a widow’s wealth and her eagerness to spend it before her death: “I was invited to dine at a rich widow’s […] she broke loose from an old miserable husband that lived so long, she thinks if she does not make haste she shall not have time to spend what he left.”[11] The widow is “old and was never handsome,” but is being courted “a thousand times more than the greatest beauty in the world that had not a fortune.”[12]
Children, too, were added to families as a result of their parents’ remarriages and many children had half-siblings and step-siblings.[13]
Other Topics: Stepchildren, Courtship and Betrothal
- ↑ Susan Brigden, New Worlds, Lost Worlds: The Rule of the Tudors, 1485-1603 (New York: Penguin Books, 2000), 55.
- ↑ Lori A. Gates, “Widows, Property, and Remarriage: Lessons from Glastonbury’s Deverill Manors,” Albion: A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies 28, no. 1 (Spring 1996), 19.
- ↑ Ibid.
- ↑ Ibid., 20.
- ↑ Ibid.
- ↑ Ibid., 21.
- ↑ Julie Hardwick, “Widowhood and Patriarchy in Seventeenth Century France,” Journal of Social History 26, no. 2 (Autumn 1992), 133.
- ↑ Ibid., 134.
- ↑ Ibid.
- ↑ Brigden, 61.
- ↑ Mary Johnston, “Widows in the First and the Seventeenth Centuries,” The Classical Weekly 25, no. 6 (November 1931), 48.
- ↑ Ibid.
- ↑ Bridgen, 55.